Method in Cartoonology, It Takes a Village . . .

In the process of posting a link to some of my cartoon commentary [Thanks! Mike] Michael Barrier made some qualifying remarks:

I sometimes feel when I read Bill's pieces that he is taking a long way around when a more direct route is available, but what the hey, he's doing intellectual work that almost no one else writing about animation is doing. I've just read through his What's Opera, Doc? postings, and my reaction could be summed up as impatience, followed by second thoughts along the lines of, wait a minute, there are some ideas here that really deserve a careful look.

I don’t know quite what he has in mind when he refers to “taking the long way around”, but I do know what impatience is and I can certainly see why Mike, or anyone else, would react to my work in that way. For better or worse, “a more direct route” is unavailable to me.

So let me say a thing or two about what I’m up to.

Anyone who reads my stuff sees that I spend a lot of time simply describing what happens. If you know the cartoon I'm working on—and Mike certainly knows these cartoons, very well—that descriptive work is going to seem obvious and so may be a bit irritating—I know, I know, I've watched the cartoon! I’m looking for a pattern, or a detail or two, and these things may not spring into relief until the cartoon has been described in some detail (think, for example, of my discussions of ring form in Fantasia and Heart of Darkness). And, often enough, I don’t even spot the pattern or detail until I’ve sunk knee-deep in description. I start with some vague idea that something’s there, but it takes a bit of work actually to see it.

Consider What’s Opera, Doc? It wasn’t until I was deep into the analysis and description that I noticed that Elmer’s anger at Bugs could, and should, be attributed to Bugs deceiving him by dressing in drag and responding to his courtship apparently in kind. I then asserted that this is different from what happens in the other (some, most, all?) Elmer and Bugs cartoons where Elmer’s animosity, if you can call it that, is given in the basic framework of the cartoon. Elmer comes out hunting rabbits and Bugs is his target. Conflict is inherent in the situation and one expects it to intensify as the cartoon moves forward.

My assertion, then, was and is that Elmer’s anger in the last third of What’s Opera, Doc? is something other than this normal intensification. This anger arose from romantic disappointment generated within the cartoon itself, rather than being part of the cartoon’s basic framework. For what it’s worth, I doubt that I would have noticed that if I hadn’t been going through the cartoon slowly and carefully, taking screen shots, then describing them, and, in the process, paying attention to how much screen time was allotted to this that and the other. This was no ordinary gag, taking 10, 20, 30 so seconds of running time. It ran well over two minutes (from 2:58 when Elmer first sees Bugs atop the horse to 5:18 when Bugs’ helmet falls off); that’s a third of the running time for the cartoon (not counting the credit sequences). That’s a long time.

And, though I didn’t mention that duration in my original posts, that was certainly on my mind when I made my assertion that this cartoon is different from the others. And that’s all I did, ASSERT the difference. To actually ARGUE the point I’d have to discuss other Bugs and Elmer cartoons and show that, in them, Elmer’s late-cartoon anger is simply part of the natural escalation of the basic conflict and not something arising from a change in his relationship to Bugs that takes place within cartoon itself.

How do you make such an argument? Obviously you need to discuss other cartoons. How many: two, three, 10, all the Bugs and Elmer’s? And just how would you go about it? The answer to that, obviously enough, depends on the cartoons themselves.

But, you might start with those where Bugs puts on drag, for this is not the only such cartoon—think, for example, of Bugs in Rabbit Seasoning. In these cases one would have to distinguish these cases from what happens in Opera. How? And why confine ourselves to Bugs and Elmers? Bugs dresses as a bobby-soxer in Long-Haired Hare for example. Once we’ve made that argument . . .

And then there’s my argument about breaking the fourth wall, that not only is it frequent in gag-based cartoons, but it seems natural in then. It’s one thing to make the suggestion, which I’ve done in a post, but an actual argument will take many cases. And they’re going to have to be examined in some detail.

It just goes on and on.

The fact is, all I hope to accomplish in these posts, all I CAN hope to accomplish, is to come up with “some ideas here that really deserve a careful look.” To actually establish any of these ideas in a strong way, that will take a lot of work, not only by me, but by others interested in cartoons. That’s a job for a village, a community, of scholars.